An old sawmill located at Gilbertson Park in Elgin has a new roof over its head after Fayette County Conservation worked with Dale Kittleson, owner of Wild Rose Timberworks in Decorah, to build a timber-frame shelter for the mill. (Chris DeBack photo)

Old-time technique used to preserve Gilbertson's sawmill

By Chris Deback
cdeback@thefayettecountyunion.com

An old sawmill located in Gilbertson Park in Elgin recently recieved a new roof over its head. 

The mill belonged to Millard Gilbertson, after whom Gilbertson Park was named. It had an older structure around it to protect it from the elements, but over the years the structure withered and crumbled. It sits just up the road from the Gilbertson Nature Center. 

Rod Marlatt, Fayette County Conservation executive director, noted that the sawmill was still in good shape, despite it not being operational. With the possibility of someday restoring it to use for educational purposes, Fayette County Conservation wanted to get it back out of the elements. 

As a homage to the types of buildings for which the sawmill would have cut lumber, Fayette County Conservation partnered with Dale Kittleson, owner of Wild Rose Timberworks in Decorah, to construct a timber-frame building to preserve the old sawmill.

“[Dale Kittleson] grew up in a house down the road from the sawmill,” Marlatt explained. “He got in touch with us and told us what he does, and he asked if it would be cool to put a [timber-frame] building over the top of that sawmill.”

Kittleson has been in the construction business for quite a while. Having spent time on construction crews building homes in Minneapolis, he looked at his work one day and couldn't figure out which home he had just worked on. He got bored of building the same cookie-cutter homes and spent a couple years looking for a new challenge. 

“I started looking for any and all different kinds of building techniques,” he said. “I worked on log homes, dome homes, underground homes, anything that was just out of the ordinary, because it was so much more interesting.”

It wasn’t until he moved to Decorah that he discovered the timber-frame building style. He spoke with a man who was going to use Amish workers to build this style of barn for him. The Amish got too busy, so the guy asked Kittleson if he wanted to help him build it himself. 

“[My friend and I] went around to some auctions, bought some tools, bought some books and talked to some Amish guys we knew and had a great summer building this timber-frame shop,” Kittleson recalled. “While we were building it, people started hearing about it and asking for one. They asked if we could put them on our list, and we would say, “Sure.” Well, after the third or fourth time, we thought, ‘Well, maybe we should make a list.’ We made a list, and we started building timber frames and have been doing it ever since.” 

School lunches aren’t what they used to be. A lot of regulations have changed in the last decade to make school lunches healthier for the students who consume them. With October 9-13 as National School Lunch Week its people like (l-r) Connie Benjegertes, Jennifer “Toots” Myers, and Carol Stanbrough, NFV food service director, and the other cooks in the North Fayette and Valley school districts, who make the hot meals for the students everyday.  Chris DeBack photo

School lunches are not what they used to be . . .

By Chris Deback
cdeback@thefayettecountyunion.com

The school lunches students eat today aren’t the same as what was served to their parents 30 years ago. 

October 9-13 is National School Lunch Week, so Fayette County Newspapers sat down with Carol Stanbrough, North Fayette Valley Food Service director, to talk about the changes that have occurred. 

Stanbrough has been a cook at North Fayette and now North Fayette Valley for 18 years, and has held her current position for the last nine. 

She noted that many of the changes to school lunches came from former First Lady Michelle Obama through the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act that was signed into law on Dec. 13, 2010. It went into effect during the 2012-2013 school year. 

The act appropriated $4.5 billion in new funding for the following programs through Sept. 15. 2015: the National School Lunch and Breakfast programs, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC), the Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP), the Summer Food Service Program, the Afterschool Meal Program and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Education (SNAP-Ed). 

According to the School Nutrition Association website, some of the new nutrition standards put on school lunches through the law were that all grains needed to be at least 51 percent whole grain;l schools must offer fruits and vegetables with every lunch and increase the portion size; the breakfast and lunch program meals must meet a specific calorie count based on grade; schools have until July 1, 2022, to reduce sodium in meals to a certain amount based on grade level.